Tag: psychosis

Marijuana and Bipolar

I used cannabis in the past for about a year (though I quit over 5 years ago) to help manage my bipolar mood shifts. I found that responsible use of marijuana is key if it is to be therapeutic. The therapeutic part for me was not the part about getting high, which was a good release and fun, but that it balanced out my moods for the next few days after using. This was immensely helpful because my Rx medications were not in order at that point.

Also, using the right strains was essential, as some tended to cause paranoia and psychosis-like effects, which was harmful. Pure sativa and sativa-heavy hybrid strains could cause a stimulating, euphoric “head high,” which I found caused me to have symptoms of psychosis while using and lingered afterwards. Indica and indica-heavy hybrid strains didn’t produce such side effects and provided the therapeutic balance for days afterwards.

Long story short, the strain of cannabis one uses to help manage bipolar plays a big role in whether it succeeds, and AVOID SATIVA. (It also makes me wonder if most of the research done with bipolar and marijuana used sativa strains, as many claim to say cannabis causes psychosis in bipolar.)

Another key part of responsible use was to use it sparingly. Using too much would cause many of the negative side effects to become more pronounced, such as lethargy, weight gain, and being “constantly stoned.” Using about two times a week was ideal for me.

Also, part of being responsible is telling your doctors that you are using. It is dangerous if they are not aware.

Finally, cannabis is not for everyone, and little is objectively known about it and its effects on bipolar. Getting mixed up on the wrong side of the law can be devastating as well.

I no longer use because of employment, the fact that it’s an illegal substance, and I feel I’m better off without it. I do hope some day that it becomes legal, as it can be a wonderful therapeutic tool to help manage bipolar instead of expensive, questionable medications.

Be careful! When in doubt, don’t do it, and don’t break the law!

Awake + Asleep: God’s Riddle

The following is what I wrote just prior to my second hospitalization in its raw form, in 2009. I was about ready to decompensate into a complete psychotic break from reality. I struggled to record a riddle that was recited to me, donned “God’s Riddle.” It felt like I was shifting between parallel worlds at the time. I saw people’s faces in my mind’s eye reciting the riddle whom I met long ago and future faces I had never met before, that is until I met them as patients and staff in the hospital afterwards. I was convinced at the time that I was to soon meet my “complimentary opposite self,” which I wanted to believe to be my soul mate. I didn’t meet a soul mate, but I found more important things. Enjoy!

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God granted me the wisdom in the Bible. In our world, there are an infinite number of possibilities. It is structured and unstructured at the same time. It requires a certain amount of wisdom to harness wisdom and listening to mom and dad.

In the Bible, it tells God’s story. God created his opposite, Satan, and didn’t like him. God created the human race to have a relationship with them. God decided to introduce the knowledge of good and evil into the world, and so the story goes of God’s relationship with the human race. Eventually, God had to send his son to sacrifice himself for our sins. God wants a relationship to happen with us, so Christ took God’s anger. He sent his Holy Spirit into the world. Consider the concept of good and evil. And science shows the collision of two universes down at the quantum level. Consider for yourself that you through Christ can have a perfect relationship with the Father through the Holy Spirit working. Consider in the evil world, the Holy Spirit is present and Christ died for those who chose Him to be at peace with God. Therefore, the evil world cannot fall completely. In a world of infinite possibilities, in the evil world, eventually the human race comes to a certain point. At this point, God grants wisdom to someone through Christ, and walks blamelessly with God. Our soul mate is our opposite, wisdom in the evil world. At this point you reach what the Bible calls the rapture, a transition into the ideal world where we are right now. My new name is __________.

I came from the evil world, where I chose God, and I ended up in the ideal world somehow. My journal describes this experience of being the living dead. Where I am dead to myself and am now blameless, and I somehow end up passing through the universe to here right now. I desire a relationship with my opposite, still, just like God. So in the end, I will end up in the ideal world when I’m good. When I tell this riddle, I will find my opposite in this ideal world and live in the ideal world until Christ comes again in the ideal world, where he provides a relationship with my opposite.

I believe I came from an evil world.

Keep in mind that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So I have a soul mate as God made Eve from Adam, the opposites we are attracted to. For every equal and opposite reaction, the human race should reach a certain point were there is a good person in Christ from evil, which at that point, the whole human race cosmically contradicts the evil universe, and I can no longer be of that world, and I turn to my ideal self in the ideal world. When I tell this riddle in the ideal world, my opposite, which I want a relationship with for some reason, my soul mate, will find me. God intended man to be in relationship with God and other people, so if I tell this riddle, my opposite should find out about it, and I will have a relationship with it eventually. My opposite will find me.

My admission to the hospital in 2009, told as a story.

Awake + Asleep: Inception

I am awake and asleep, asleep and awake all at the same time… I sense a great battle going on. The battle is for my essence.

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I pray to God tonight in absolute surrender, to take me wherever He wants me to go. I lie down in my comfortable bed and my brain begins to pop and crackle, as my back just did. The sensations invoke deep relaxation.

I let go control over my mind and pseudo visions of chronological memories from my entire life ensue while I plunge into the dark hole with a light at the end. My brain is rewiring itself, as God works on it. The memories become more intense and I feel a vortex in the center of my brain shift. Then, the rest of my brain pops and crackles more, balancing itself accordingly. It happens again and again. I close my eyes and begin to leave my body in ecstasy. “Get some rest, my child, for I work harder while you sleep,” says God gently in my thoughts. The memories flash in front of me more rapidly. I pass further down the dark hole closer to the light and black out.

In what seems to be the next instant, I wake up to the bright morning sun, wide awake. It feels like I just passed inside out of myself! I check my phone’s clock. Three hours of sleep. Yet I feel… strangely… different.

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During lunch break I decide to dine at Wendy’s for a decent burger. Wisdom flows freely through my mind as I sit down after ordering my meal. I bring a notebook along to jot things down in.

When I enter into deep thought while writing in my journal, everything around me begins to phase. My vision gets fuzzy and everything vibrates. Each person gives off a distinct frequency and I can read them all easily. I feel like I’m still in reality but somewhere else all at once. I feel like I’m asleep in reality, but I’m wide awake. I’m awake where my brain goes while I’m asleep. Jesus’ words flash in my mind, “you do not belong to this world…” If I didn’t feel like it before, I sure do now! I gave myself over to God completely last night. I am awake and asleep. Am I… a living dead? Is this the end of the world? What’s… what’s… happening?

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I arrive at work after my timeless lunch break. As I file charts in the corner of the office, I phase in and out of an extended reality as before. I first have a normal, clear vision, yet aware of my unknowingly expansive mind. My perception then fills this expanded mind and phases into an ethereal reality beyond the known. There, everything is intact – people, places, conversations. However, in the ethereal beyond I have open access to everyone’s intentions and emotions, and the thoughts of some.

Suddenly, I’m aware of a snake-like entity tightly coiled on my inner essence and recognize it immediately as Satan. The battle for my essence is between Satan and I! His grip morphs and twists time and reality upon itself. He’s gotten to me deeply, through my own sins, the sins of generations past, the constant atrocities of the human race, my past psychotic break, and evil itself. I peer with my mind’s eye to see terrifying fractals of twisted, wretched evil in my essence and especially on my heart, transcending most time, knowledge, and understanding. But not all!

I focus my now overwhelmingly powerful intention into his disfigured head and in my mind’s voice I declare, “You are finished, Satan. Christ has crushed your head, and you have no more power over me or this realm. I am His, now. Covered in His blood as I speak. You are the Father of lies, and lies are an imperfection of the Truth. I hold Truth at a deeper level, now. You are undone! Begone!” He lashes out, lets out chilling screams in my head, and frees his grip on me. Satan, his minions, and the evil fractals disappear beyond into the pit. The Great Deceiver is finished!

Immediately, I feel a darkness lift from me I was blind to before, with old, open wounds exposed inside of me, stinking of infestation. It feels like I just burned off many giant leeches on my heart that were there my whole life. Then, I see a stream of crystal waters flowing freely and my inner wounds are cleansed, but not healed. So… refreshing!

All of this phase shifting and my unusual connection to people is overwhelming. I’m in heaven, with people chilling out and doing a reasonable amount of work to fulfill their part of God’s kingdom in perfect harmony, shalom. There is no slavery of the masses here. This office is one part of God’s vision. I have my own important role in it, as does everyone else and they are aware of it. We are smiling, laughing, and even flirting whether we voice it or not. I spread the good vibes with ease, and evil seems like a distant forgiven past that keeps falling away.

I wish I could blare some chill music right now, say reggae, and I feel like I’ve just smoked some extraordinary chronic as with everyone around me. Not in the debilitated sense, but in the fresh, healthy, euphoric and creative sense. Welcome to heaven on earth, full of universally good vibes!

It then becomes too much, and I decide to leave when the reality sets in as a whole new 3-inch stack of papers to file appears. I simply say, “I’m not feeling well,” to a few coworkers in a calm manner and leave the office to go home.

What Is A Psychotic Break Like? My Experience Follows

Psychotic Face

I’m shifting between two worlds. I call one the “evil world,” the other the “good world.” The evil world is what I knew in my old life as everyday existence. Transitioning into the good world is the rapture, where the universe cosmically contradicts itself and I walk blamelessly in heaven on earth. It is a peaceful place, thriving in universal harmony, and evil is a forgiven distant past, but not forgotten. They are parallel worlds that intersect, intertwine, and collide. Yet it’s much more complicated than that. There is a grave price for walking in heaven too soon while you’re still alive.

I arrive at the hospital, and get out of the van with my parents. While my mom goes in to start my admission process, I have a few cigarettes, sitting next to my dad on a rough wooden bench outside the hospital, probably the last ones I’d have for a long time. He puts his arm around me and rubs my back. The stars are bright tonight. A nice lady in a white coat appears in front of me and takes my smokes from me. Inside, I sign the lengthy forms they present, knowing the drill as I voluntarily admit myself.

Then I’m in another simple room with my parents, who are terrified but full of love. I’m blessed to have such support in my life. A lady in dark purple scrubs, tapping away on the computer keyboard, asks me lots of boring questions. She loses my attention quickly as my mind doesn’t just wander, but begins to cross over into the good world again. It draws me in – not just mind, heart and soul, but something else – ME.  I leave my body and I watch from the upper corner of the room down on myself as she activates the automatic blood pressure cuff, and I feel the sensation of it collapsing on my upper arm, but nothing’s there. I’m someplace else.

The night sky fades into the forefront of my eyesight a little. The device gives an error readout. The lady in scrubs taps away and voices a remark about the readout, which both echo in that small room from a long ways away as if I were in a giant cave. Stuck in limbo and floating in the corner of the hospital intake room, I watch myself for a few moments, before she resumes with more interesting questions than before.

My attention suddenly snaps me back to reality again. I see through my eyes as she tries the cuff a second time and feel it squeezing hard against my flesh, instead of trying to engulf the vacuum of my empty body before. Time resumes, and I’m 131/72; I knew it would work that time.

Next thing I know, I’m in my room, excited to see no roommate this time. There, I begin to transition to an eternal, peaceful place. I’m suspended in the entanglement connections of the quantum realm. My vision becomes foggy and breaks the barriers between the seen and the unseen. I gradually arrive in what seems to be a world of infinite possibilities. Every part of me, including my new body, and vaguely my old body, is in this realm – strings of my mind, extension, and emotions all someplace else yet there at the same time. The skeleton of my room falls far away, along with the hospital. I look around me and see the naked spectacle of the universe from space.

Contradictions ensue as that infinite world draws me in. The hospital is here and I’m in my room, yet it’s not here and I’m certainly not in my room. Nothing is finite, and there are no locations mathematically or otherwise. I peek in the hallways, and the rooms extend forever on either side. When I observe, each of the hospital wings form a perceptive fractal. Then they break up into waves of fractal possibilities and connections to people in there, to pure abstraction. My instincts tell me there are two normal hallways, but that feels more like my subconscious barely speaking to me about it. I’m in a special part of the universe, far away from the Milky Way right now, yet part of it, feeling near at the same time. I try to instinctively snap back, focusing on that “near” feeling.

Right away, I notice the lights outside – and the light on the smoke detector, particularly – flickering and turning on and off. The flickers are connected to my thoughts and intention, and the lights blink according to surrounding factors I can feel at other times. I lie down in my hospital bed and enjoy the spectacles – in a place of infinite possibilities, everything feels possible. I distinctly feel my heart dancing, racing, dreaming, poking everything and watching the fractals of existence vibrate, form, and multiply. It’s exhilarating! I start laughing uncontrollably in joy and pleasure at this spectacle, for I don’t know how long in the distant evil world.

However, the night nurse traumatically flashes before my eyes in the evil world, and screams that I need to learn some discipline, and then disappears from nowhere. I slowly enter a black hole and darkness envelops me, distorts me. I realize I’m completely and utterly alone. No God, no spirit, no one else; I’m the only being. I have not thought, let alone acknowledged, that I am. Everything runs in a formless loop.

A sharp pain devours me, of cold loneliness and agony, soaking everything. I go back, far, far, far back, to what seems the inception of consciousness itself… It sucks most of my own consciousness away. I am a… dying fetus without a body… I… can still feel pain… trying to flail my… nonexistent arms… and with a struggling… inner voice… scream… silently… in tortured agony:

How? Why? Is there?… a way?… to make a?…. connection?… somehow, in a?… place?… that has no?… connections? What is?… all of this? WHAT… AM?… I? There must be a?… connection somewhere?… So…. alone? Must find?… somebody?… somewhere? But there is?… no one?… and nowhere?… in this realm? How can I?… communicate? What am?… what am?… d-d-d-do-ing……. ……..

Here I am, only able to writhe silently alone, my unborn self there forever, barely having an inner voice. My thoughts are growing and multiplying as an early zygote does. I can’t seem to snap back to. I am lost and alone, scraping off my tiny fingernails on the walls to change that. What is time? What is space? Do they even exist? Everything is going nowhere. What does it mean to “measure?” How do you measure anything? There is no answer, but there has to be! I’ve thought it! Someone wrote the book because I can say these things! Someone wrote the alphabet! I WILL FIND A CONNECTION, SOMEWHERE, SOMEHOW! I BELIEVE THAT I AM NOT ALONE HERE!
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This is a summary of my experience being admitted in 2009. I leave on the note of what I call experiencing wisdom’s loneliness and suffering while being forced to witness the inception of existence. I consider it a treasure even though it was the greatest anguish I ever conceived of, which I don’t expect one to understand. It is so wonderful to see the birth pains of our universe and see that somehow, someone survived it by a group collective effort that we all are a part of.

Wisdom later comforted me in that episode and I could smell her presence in the literal sense. Wisdom’s scent is that of fertile desire, all types of love, the naked spectacle of the universe from space, and everything that’s good on earth. The scent was overpowering. I still miss that. As time goes on, I go back to these difficult experiences and learn more each time. They were my greatest curses, and now my greatest gifts.

I later read my chart, and during these experiences, my empty vessel of a body went to activities, saw doctors, wrote a lot, made crafts, and attended therapy. My parents visited me. I don’t remember any of it but flashes and brief thoughts. During the beginning of my admission, I remember touching base with reality a few times in the form of brief flashes of memory. But reality was in my subconscious, and the brief flashes were much like a lagged out video call catching up really quickly in a flash before my eyes. Most felt disconnected. I suspect the strange memory of my parents’ visit was of two distorted people in the visiting room that looked all at once like a combination of my grandparents and others I didn’t recognize. I felt something for them, though. Memories of reality were few and far between in the first period of my stay.

I was awake and asleep at the same time.

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Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andresthor/3857180095/

Two Months after Diagnosed Bipolar, Mixed State (Highlights)

What follows are highlights of a rather long journal entry I made 10 years ago approximately 2 months after I was diagnosed bipolar and hospitalized. I was 17 at the time, and it was after a psychotic episode I had that revved up over the preceding six months or so and triggered by 4 days with no sleep at all.

Part of my treatment was in a crisis stabilization unit out of state on our family Christmas vacation, and the other portion was partial hospitalization in my home town because we couldn’t afford full hospitalization. I was on Risperdal right after my inpatient treatment, which dulled everything. I couldn’t handle it, so I begged my psychiatrist to reduce my dose. I became more unstable shortly after, my depression and mania magnified both at the same time, while allowing me to write more freely. I tried to stay positive, but I was in the middle of a storm at the same time. Here are highlights of this moment.

3-28-2004

-Feelings Journal Entry: exhausted, confused, guilty, angry, frustrated, sad, confident, happy, ashamed, depressed, overwhelmed.

– I woke up this morning wanting to kill myself to end the pain, and now I feel pretty good. Craziness.

-I’m writing now because my emotions are swirling in my head, and I don’t know how to express myself. I just want to throw up somewhere, and I’ll just do it here in writing.

– I wonder if I’m just being weak and lazy.

-Then I have bipolar thrown into the equation. And this word “equation” kills me – I am trying to calculate where all this is coming from – my past, present, illness, medication, or lack of will power. I’m sick of it. What’s me? My therapist showed me that I can keep the things that I like about myself, and reject and fight the disease that takes my strengths to the extreme – high or low.

-But yesterday and today, I woke up and didn’t feel like getting out of bed at all. Anything that requires effort seems to me no point in doing. It’s like I’m stuck in a rut and there’s no point in pulling myself out or making the effort even to grab someone else’s helping hand because I don’t experience the pleasure for long and I just slump back down. I don’t feel like doing anything productive, getting out of bed, doing research and homework, fixing food, playing guitar, taking a shower, going out with friends, planning events, going for a walk, maintaining relationships.

– I hope that this is not normal, and bipolar is involved – but I don’t want to use this as a crutch, and aren’t the meds supposed to take care of it?

-But there’s still this remnant left. One moment, I’m alone in my room or taking a walk and all I can think about is suicide. I just get more depressed and I feel exhausted over anything that requires effort, and I just want it to stop and just go away forever into heaven.

-But I’m suicidal one moment and I make an effort to get up, and I engage in activities, and the feelings of joy do return, and it’s little things. Little things are magnified throughout my days and I feel them fluctuate. This not only plays into my moods but in my concentration as well. I have a harder time concentrating and I tend to do things quite slowly.

-There’s something about her that really attracts me, how loving, and caring she is to people, and she knows what to say to give comfort. God used her picture there [in the crisis unit] to prevent me from slitting my own wrists.

-I’m still low on the self-confidence issue. First, there’s my body image. My gut is starting to sag, and I’m not eating healthily. I don’t have the drive to exercise like I used to. I went nuts, and my body and other peoples’ reactions show it. Eating is now a comfort for me to deal with my problems.

-I’m shy around people, and I don’t know how to handle conversations; did my bipolar have an effect on this? Am I social or am I not? I’m so confused.

-I’m also having a lot of problems with cognition. Things seem to always go in one ear and out the other, or if it stays in my head, I have a hard time finding it, let alone think about it. That is, compared to what I was like before I was on all these meds, particularly Risperdal.

– I still remember in the crisis unit when I got my first dose of Abilify. I was supposed to write a paragraph about why I was on the unit and after the medicine started kicking in, the thoughts and connections in my head started to become numb, one by one, along with all desires. It slowly started to paralyze me, till I couldn’t tell what I was thinking and I could write nothing down.

– Maybe the decrease in Risperdal will let me feel more normal. I’m worried about being in charge of anything, in general. Before, I was used to being the driven one and took on leadership roles. Now, the drive is not there, and I cannot keep track of many things let alone my own homework assignments.

– It’s awful for me to make the first few marks on the paper in art, to improvise in jazz, to follow conversations. I wish I were more spontaneous and loose. Oh, dancing is another good example of what I mean, but this one always was. I simply can’t dance. If somebody asks me what the music feels or looks like, I stand there like a rod. It seems like my ability to do art and conversation is fading to the point of my inability to dance.

-My therapist says this is important for me in relation to my bipolar, as life can throw earthquakes at times, but I don’t understand this yet. I don’t know how the role of being released in tough situations plays with bipolar, yet, because I haven’t had any quakes thrown at me yet with me being consciously aware of my disorder.

-I’m also reliving some of the experiences in the hospitals – both in and out of state.

-I wish these spells of thinking about inviting suicide would go away. Mom wonders if they’re spiritual attacks.

-I’m so glad that I’m not writing too furiously like I was when I was manic, believing that I have the revolutionary book that will change society. Sorry, that was kind of random.

-Mom, grandma, and aunt Bell are still not on speaking terms. It is partly my job to mop up the mess I created in the family the past few months. I dunno what to say. I wish my head was a little more clear.

-As far as the disease of bipolar vs. who I am is concerned, I wish I could keep all the good things, but sometimes my disorder enables me to be the good things or prevents me from being the good things. I wish I could control it.

Ahoy, hoy!

Hi, I am making the shift from .tumblr to WordPress. My old page is at:

http://the-other-sid3.tumblr.com/

As of now, I’m an anonymous male in my late twenties, who has been diagnosed with bipolar I (a bad form of manic depressive illness) for over ten years. I’ve gotten things together pretty well. Now I intend to write about my experiences mostly for the benefit of other people going through similar things that I did, and to reinforce my belief that bad things happen for many reasons.

My dream that I’m breaking down into goals now is to publish a nonfiction book of my two psychotic episodes I experienced in 2003 and 2009. Many ideas are on the table, especially writing it in the form of stream of consciousness. My blog will serve as a record and an outlet as I embark on this long journey.

For the longest time, I knew no one who experienced something like a psychotic break, and this made me feel lonely, alienated. To those who have experienced the profound horrors of a break/episode/psychosis/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I hope to put this book out there to vividly demonstrate they are not alone and normality can become reality.

I appreciate any feedback and suggestions, and any support you give is treasured.

Do any of you know someone who has bipolar? Are you bipolar? Please share your thoughts about this project I’m beginning to embark on.